Isaiah 55: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

God calls everyone who is thirsty to come and receive food and drink they cannot pay for, and asks why they spend money and effort on what does not satisfy. He promises an everlasting covenant tied to the promises made to David, and says Israel will call a nation it does not know. He tells people to seek him while he may be found, says his thoughts and ways are far above theirs, and compares his word to rain and snow that always accomplish what he sends them to do. The chapter closes with a picture of the people going out in joy, with hills singing, trees clapping, and useful trees growing where thorns and briers were.

Claim by Claim

1. 55:1
   • A call goes out to everyone who is thirsty to come to the waters.
   • The one who has no money is called to come.
   • The hearers are told to come, buy, and eat.
   • The hearers are told to come and buy wine and milk without money and without price.
2. 55:2
   • The hearers are asked why they weigh out money for what is not bread.
   • The hearers are asked why they spend their labor for what does not satisfy.
   • The hearers are commanded to listen diligently to the speaker.
   • The hearers are commanded to eat what is good.
   • The hearers' souls will delight themselves in fatness.
3. 55:3
   • The hearers are commanded to incline their ear.
   • The hearers are commanded to come to the speaker.
   • The hearers are commanded to hear.
   • If they hear, their soul will live.
   • The speaker will make an everlasting covenant with them.
   • That covenant is identified as the faithful acts of covenant-love promised to David.
4. 55:4
   • The speaker says he has given him as a witness to the peoples.
   • The speaker says he has given him as a leader and commander to the peoples.
5. 55:5
   • The one addressed will call a nation he does not know.
   • A nation that did not know the one addressed will run to him.
   • They will run because of the LORD, the God of the one addressed.
   • They will run because of the Holy One of Israel.
   • The reason given is that he has glorified the one addressed.
6. 55:6
   • The hearers are commanded to seek the LORD while he may be found.
   • The hearers are commanded to call on him while he is near.
7. 55:7
   • The wicked man is to forsake his way.
   • The man of iniquity is to forsake his thoughts.
   • He is to return to the LORD.
   • The LORD will have mercy on him.
   • He is to return to our God.
   • God will pardon abundantly.
8. 55:8
   • God's thoughts are not the hearers' thoughts.
   • The hearers' ways are not God's ways.
   • This is declared by the LORD.
9. 55:9
   • The heavens are higher than the earth.
   • God's ways are higher than the hearers' ways in the same way.
   • God's thoughts are higher than the hearers' thoughts in the same way.
10. 55:10
    • The rain and the snow come down from heaven.
    • They do not return there.
    • Instead they water the earth.
    • They make the earth bring forth and sprout.
    • The earth gives seed to the sower.
    • The earth gives bread to the eater.
11. 55:11
    • God's word goes forth out of his mouth.
    • God's word will be like the rain and snow.
    • God's word will not return to him empty.
    • God's word will accomplish what he desires.
    • God's word will succeed in the thing for which he sent it.
12. 55:12
    • The hearers will go out with joy.
    • The hearers will be led forth with peace.
    • The mountains and the hills will break forth into singing before them.
    • All the trees of the field will clap their hands.
13. 55:13
    • In place of the thornbush a cypress will come up.
    • In place of the nettle a myrtle will come up.
    • This will be to the LORD for a name.
    • This will be an everlasting sign.
    • That sign will not be cut off.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

55:1

The verse is shaped like a street vendor's cry in an ancient marketplace (the opening word is the shout used to hail passers-by, and "buy" translates a Hebrew verb used specifically of buying grain rations. Water, wine and milk were not luxuries but the ordinary marks of a well-supplied household: water for life, wine and milk for a table that has more than the minimum. The paradox is deliberate) a market call in which nothing costs anything.

55:2

"Bread" in Hebrew regularly stands for food in general, not only baked loaves. The word translated "fatness", rendered here as "the richest food", refers to the fat of meat, which in the ancient diet was the choicest and most prized part, so it stands for the best of everything. The word behind "your soul" (Hebrew nephesh) means the whole living self, including appetite and throat, not an immaterial part of a person; "let your soul delight itself" is closer to "enjoy yourself thoroughly."

55:3

A covenant was a formal, binding agreement, sworn and publicly witnessed, of the kind made between a king and his people or between two rulers, closer to a treaty than to a private promise. "The sure mercies of David" translates a phrase meaning the reliable acts of loyal love pledged to David: the standing promise, known to Isaiah's hearers, that David's line would endure. "Sure" here carries its older sense of "firm, guaranteed," not "probable."

55:4

The Hebrew leaves open who "him" is: David himself, remembered as the one whose reign testified to God before surrounding nations, or a coming ruler of David's line. Translations divide, and the ambiguity is in the text. A "witness" is a legal term, the person who stands up and states publicly what he knows to be true, as in a court case. "Commander" translates a word for one who gives orders, whether a military or civil chief.

55:5

"LORD" printed in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters (YHWH) which Jewish readers by this period did not pronounce aloud, saying "my Lord" instead; English versions follow that practice with the capitals. "The Holy One of Israel" is a title for God used more in Isaiah than in the whole rest of the Hebrew Bible; "holy" here means set apart and utterly other, not simply morally good. "Call" means summon, to send for someone the way a ruler sends for a subject.

55:7

"Return" translates the ordinary Hebrew verb for turning around and going back the way you came. It is the standard word for what English Bibles elsewhere call repentance: not primarily a feeling of regret but a change of direction. "His way" and "his thoughts" are a matched pair, conduct and the plans behind it, and the same two words are picked up in verse 8.

55:8

In this poem, "thoughts" means plans and ideas, and "ways" means how a person acts. God is saying his are nothing like ours.

55:10

In the farming year of ancient Israel the rains came in two seasons, and everything depended on them; snow fell on the northern heights and fed the streams. "Give seed to the sower" refers to the fact that a harvest had to supply two things at once: grain to eat now, and grain held back to plant next year.

55:11

A spoken word is pictured here as a messenger sent out on an errand by a king. Such an envoy would carry out his commission and then come back to report; to "return void" is to come back empty-handed, having failed. The image works because in Hebrew a word once uttered was thought of as something released and active, not merely a sound.

55:12

"Go out" and "be led forth" are the words used of leaving a place of captivity in procession, the same language used of Israel leaving Egypt. Isaiah's hearers, facing or living in exile in Babylon, would have heard a departure homeward. Trees clapping hands and hills singing belong to a standard Hebrew way of speaking in which the landscape joins in a celebration.

55:13

Thorn bushes and briers were what grew on land that had gone out of cultivation (the visible sign of abandoned or ruined country. The cypress (KJV "fir") and the myrtle were valued trees: the first tall and useful for building, the second an evergreen with fragrant leaves used at festivals. The contrast is between wasteland and settled, tended ground. "For a name" means as a memorial or monument, something that keeps a reputation alive; a "sign" is a standing marker that points back to what happened. "Cut off" continues the tree imagery) this monument will not be felled.